


4:15 pm next tuesday

by tnevmucric



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Metaverse (Persona 5), Beginnings, Developing Relationship, Identity Issues, Love, M/M, Midlife Crisis, Slice of Life, middle aged shuake, relationship excerpts of two middle aged men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27640262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnevmucric/pseuds/tnevmucric
Summary: “what made you want to get involved in the waterbed business?”“don’t laugh, but i have narcolepsy so the beds come in handy when i pass out.”
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro & Persona 5 Protagonist, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 9
Kudos: 39





	4:15 pm next tuesday

**Author's Note:**

> title from a w.h. auden poem

In times of mediocrity, he saw the flashes and flickers of old film on its last legs. Cigarette burns. A countdown. He could be in the shower, brewing coffee, tying his shoes, and what he wished were an unawareness, a blissful unawareness, remained only as an overt, dextrous shadow. As fissure propaganda of memory flooding into memory. This is how he has come to categorise age.

Similarly, Akira Kurusu would not admit to it for many years to come, but two years prior to meeting Goro Akechi, he did dream of him.

* * *

The pad of his pointer finger crushed crumbs from the éclair they shared only a few minutes earlier; filled with an elderflower crème patisserie and coated in a honey-vanilla glaze, it had stuck to their lips and coated the insides of their mouths with a sweetness. He rested his cheek in his other hand, fist curled loosely. This is what Akira liked about him. His bouts of sloth. The frame of his smile came together as water and clay might—each movement not without intention, without effort, and each muscle and wrinkle working to mould together. Listen, Akira thought, and you might just hear it. The pad of his pointer finger crushed crumbs on the café table and he said, without prompt, with half-lidded eyes, he said—“The problem is, is that I expect something great and wonderful and life changing to happen every day of my less-than-wonderful, not-great and unchanged life.” And that itself was unlike anything in Akira’s own less-than-wonderful life.

* * *

“Goro”, he introduced, and his voice had a surprising clarity to it. Upon inspection, his hands were dry and smooth but not without their calluses. He had a clean shave but the passing blend of grey throughout his hair caused Akira wonder what colour his stubble might be. It was the laughter lines that make him appear kind but he seemed persistent on giving the impression that he did not laugh freely. His suit was tie-less and popped at the collar, more suited for the deck of some super-yacht in the middle of the Bahamas. When he handed Akira a business card, Akira laughed.

“You’re a waterbed salesman?”

“It’s a competitive industry. Why, what do you do?”

“Family photographer. Mainly babies.”

“Like those pop-up studios in department stores?”

“Sort of”, Akira replied. The business card was plain white with a black print but it felt good under his thumb. “What made you want to get involved in the waterbed business?”

“Don’t laugh, but I have narcolepsy so the beds come in handy when I pass out.”

* * *

“He’s got these Shoulder Pads that drive me crazy,” Akira said to the telemarketer, and the telemarketer could hear the importance of the Shoulder Pads in the customer’s voice and thus capitalised them within her mind. “Also, yes. I’d like to hear about the double-glazed windows. Are they useful?”

The telemarketer nodded solemnly to herself, adjusting her headset with one hand and clicking her pen open in the other.

“They are, sir. They really are.”

* * *

“Back in my home town it was like the heat stuck around, even in winter. Back then it felt like any direction I took was the wrong one. Nothing grew, so I didn’t grow. But the grass over-grew, and the weeds festered and…” he trailed off. “This’ll sound strange, Akira.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“So say it.”

His accent curled around his following words like a past life rediscovered.

“I had this dream that I woke in a field of wisteria. The sky was so blue and I had awoken with the sensation that I was running out of clothes to wear that made sense. I must have been 19, almost 20. And I walked through this field and passed a man who was pulling peonies out by the root and a thought came to me—the thought that someday, one day, only I would remain.”

Akira thought; it’s like a dream I had so long ago.

It’s like a dream I once had of you.

* * *

“There are random, if insurmountable moments in life which remind me of the kind of man I am and the kind of person I was as I grew up. It’s these moments that make me wish the world were more forgiving.” He looked over at Akira, midway folding a coverlet over one of the display beds. “I stole a detective novel when I was 17. Isn’t that funny?”

“What will the starving masses do when they find out about your fling with the law?”

“You’d be surprised how many waterbeds I sell in a week.” He fluffs the pillows twice each. “I am a narcoleptic waterbed salesman trying to explain to this middle-class Indian couple that I do not think the practice of shiatsu massage would be great on a waterbed but I _can_ direct them to a store which sells affordable massage tables.” He stops to fix his cuff link. “Anyway, I can afford some discrepancy.”

There was something irritable about him, which verged on hypochondria and kleptomania in the way he spoke (stolen words, fear of borrowed time). He gestured Akira to follow and Akira did, sinking into impressions of chewing gum as if it were a matter of marathon and sifting sand on a summer day like you knew you were bound to find gold. Goro stopped at a large bed and let his arm run along the backing.

“Mango wood”, he said, following a nail along the grain. “I’m not sure why people don’t make more furniture out of it. It’s a beautiful material.”

“Convince me to buy it.”

“That’s sort of my job.”

“Yeah”, Akira agreed, and his mouth felt dry and his jacket felt too heavy and it felt like, at the worst of times, Goro could see right through him and pin his gaze on whatever form of impulsivity Akira had attached himself to as of late.

Goro looked away, down at the bed. The water mattress was dark blue without its cover and contrasted appealingly against the warmth of the bed frame.

“Okay.”

* * *

A whisper: “Ask me what I’m thinking and I’ll tell you the truth.”

A whisper back: “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that somehow I knew you before I met you. That being around you feels like an extension of me. I’m thinking you’re something in my life I don’t want to lose.”

“Why do you always talk like that? So broadly, I mean. Always—you’re always fatalistic, somehow. Like all of this—” A flippant gesture, lost in the dark. “—has meaning.”

A kiss: wet. A hand: pulling.

A whisper: “I’m thinking about having you fuck me tomorrow morning while we’re both still half asleep and hazy. Or maybe I’ll fuck myself on you and you can just watch. You can wonder what I’m thinking about then, too.”

* * *

“You like it?” Goro asked, distant from the phone, as Akira held his own to his ear. “I don’t give refunds.”

“Is that ego?”

“Yes, and I’m just that good at what I do.”

“I like the bed.”

“Good. I have a porch, too. At my house.”

Akira’s old bed remained dismantled in the corner, the old mattress too pushed dangerously towards his ceiling fan. The waterbed felt funny beneath his back and under his neck so he rolled over on his side, facing the window and taking the phone with him.

“You’re going to give me your porch?”

“No, I’m going to invite you.”

Akira laughed quietly, and warmth unfurled in his chest.

“Invite me to your porch”, he said.

* * *

“Tell me something.”

“When I was 17 my dad bought me a car so I drove it outside of the city and set it on fire. I had to get three buses home. Your turn.”

“I’ve had that T.V. since I was 10. The red light of the power button is always on at night and it always keeps me up—I can see it even when my eyes are closed. I liked to pretend I could switch it on and off by covering it with my hand through the dark, but I’d get scared that I might lift my hand and it wouldn’t be there anymore.” Goro lifted his cheek off the pillow to look over his shoulder at Akira.

“That’s a long time to keep a T.V.”

“I guess it is”, Akira replied. “At my high school graduation I spent the afterwards laying horizontal in my parent’s car and crying.”

“Who didn’t?”

* * *

“You look good here”, Goro said quietly.

The steam from their coffees dragged into the cold air. The only outdoor furniture was a love seat swing that did not swing.

“On your porch”, Akira said, holding a chipped mug with childlike roses painted on it.

“Yes”, Goro paused. “On my porch.”

* * *

“I think the mother of the baby I took photos of today was really embarrassed that the booties on her kid didn’t match.” Akira chewed at a fry thoughtfully, gesturing with the end of it pinched between his fingers. “One was red with polka dots and the other was just plain red. I could give two shits about her kid’s booties, you know? But it was like _I_ noticed the booties, _you_ noticed _I_ noticed the booties, _you_ assume _I_ assume you are the worst parent to ever grace this mortal realm.” He licked the salt from his fingertips. “There are worse people.”

“I don’t know”, Goro mused. “I was always fashion-forward as a child.”

“You don’t say.”

Goro splayed a hand in front of them, visualising. “Violet suede trousers, black and white tartan jacket with gold buttons, pageboy cap, brown suede boots that went to the knee and which I had pulled over my trousers. I also had some significant bangs at the time and the side of my head, just behind my ear, was shaved because earlier that week I watched Willy Wonka for the first time.”

“How old were you again?”

Goro took a fry from Akira’s plate. “Oh, I don’t know. Eight or nine.”

“If you’d said last month I wouldn’t have been surprised.”

* * *

Akira pressed his ear to his mattress and pretended it sounded like the ocean.

* * *

“When was the last time you took a photo of someone old?” Goro asked and Akira shook his head, lifting the lens and clicking it into place.

“I take a photo of myself every day—you’re not that old.”

“I’m older than you.”

“A few months are nothing.”

“I’ll reach 50 before you do."

Akira’s face screwed up distastefully and he raised his head to give Goro a reprimanding look.

“Stop it. You’re barely 45.”

Goro laughed and lounged back on his chair. His scarf was an almost annoyingly bright red, draped around his neck like an ode to arterial blood spray.

“Why do you take photos of yourself?”

“Maybe I’m trying to catch myself off-guard,” Akira joked. “No, I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t changed at all. I think the same, act the same—”

“Aside from the withering feeling that if you don’t do something with your life soon you will perish without fulfilling a purpose.”

“Yes, that too. I just need something to remind myself, I guess.” Akira shook his head at himself, fiddling with the camera. “I swear, every time I look at my own face a new sunspot is there to greet me or some line that I haven’t noticed in the past ten years has decided to show up now.” He took a few test shots and Goro didn’t blink, watching him openly. “I meet a lot of different people because of my job and I get scared sometimes that I’ve become disingenuous. Taking photos, y’know… it used to be a way for me to manage the things that got so bad in my own life. Now I’m just jaded and self-centered. I lament. The older I get the more I keep looking back.”

Silence filled the small studio. Goro’s coat was a lush blue—almost cobalt.

“Take my picture, Akira.”

* * *

Akira glanced up conspicuously, newspaper concealing the lower half of his face.

“You’re a Gemini, right?”

Goro raised an eyebrow from the other end of the couch, _Vogue_ in hand and confirmed:

“I’m a Gemini.”

Akira cleared his throat. “Venus is in Libra, sashaying her way into deeper peace, harmony and beauty. She is directly opposite Mars who wants action not dancing. How are you going to hold these two in your hands? One part of you wants to get on with it. Another wants to flitter freely. Honour both of them.”

Goro rolled his eyes and pushed his feet into Akira’s lap, dislodging the astrology section of the paper. Akira set it aside and pinched his ankle, smoothing his thumb over the arch of Goro’s left foot. He thought, just once; I want to become the warm soles of your feet, which carry you from every point of your life to the next. And he meant it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading!
> 
> — tnevmucric.carrd.co


End file.
